McLaren & Lewis Hamilton:attend the hearing in the Afternoon

PARIS — Lewis Hamilton and his bosses at McLaren attended a hearing Monday at Formula One headquarters that will decide whether to reinstate his Belgian Grand Prix victory.

After three hours of meetings, Hamilton emerged and walked to the neighboring Hotel Crillon in central Paris surrounded by bodyguards, ignoring reporters' questions.

Lawyers for McLaren, Ferrari and the FIA presented their arguments at the morning session before breaking for lunch. The hearing was to resume in the afternoon, with the ruling expected to be announced Tuesday.

The hearing follows the McLaren team's appeal of a 25-second time penalty handed to Hamilton at Spa earlier this month when the British driver was judged to have gained an advantage by cutting a chicane on his way to victory.

After the penalty, the win was awarded to Hamilton's main championship rival Felipe Massa of Ferrari, while Hamilton was bumped down to third. Hamilton's lead over Massa in the drivers' standings is now down to one point after last weekend's Italian GP.

If he wins the appeal, Hamilton's F1 championship lead will be increased to seven points with four races after he regains four points and Massa loses two.

Hamilton flies to Singapore on Tuesday ahead of F1's first-ever night race Sunday.

"All we can do is present the facts," McLaren chief executive Martin Whitmarsh said Sunday. "We have just got to present the data and whatever the outcome is, that is the outcome."

Three judges appointed to the International Court of Appeal will decide whether McLaren's appeal is justified.

Hamilton was dueling with Massa's teammate Kimi Raikonnen at the closing stages of the Belgian GP and cut across the Bus Stop chicane to overtake the Finnish driver.

Hamilton immediately allowed Raikonnen to reclaim the lead before overtaking him at the next corner for the eventual win.

The judges must decide if Hamilton sufficiently surrendered the advantage he had gained when cutting the chicane.

special thanks to-canadianpress.google.com

WTF?? IF YOU ARE FEELING LIKE THAT,PLZ DONT VIST THIS LINK,ITS AN REQUEST

Hamilton stripped of his victory:placed 3rd by the race stewards

McLaren's Lewis Hamilton was stripped of a dramatic victory in the Belgian Grand Prix after stewards handed him a 25-second post-race penalty.

The Englishman was demoted to third place behind Ferrari's Felipe Massa and BMW Sauber's Nick Heidfeld.

He was accused of gaining an advantage by cutting the Spa circuit's Bus Stop chicane in a late-race battle with Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen.

Hamilton's lead over Massa in the title chase has been cut by two points.

Massa's team-mate Raikkonen, who crashed out of second place shortly after losing the lead, is 19 points adrift behind Hamilton.

Before the penalty, Hamilton had extended his lead over the Brazilian to eight points, with Raikkonen effectively out of the running on 23.

On the track, Hamilton had survived a frantic last two laps in a late shower of rain to apparently score a superb win.

Hamilton lost the lead to Raikkonen with an early spin but fought back in the closing laps to re-take the lead with two laps to go.

In a dramatic climax on a soaking track, Hamilton passed Raikkonen, lost the lead again with a spin, re-took it and then saw Raikkonen crash.

I was praying for rain - I wanted it to come because I knew how to deal with it

Lewis Hamilton

In a chaotic final couple of laps, Heidfeld jumped from eighth to third place on the track with what he called a "hero or zero decision" to come in for wet-weather tyres with two laps to go.

Renault's Fernando Alonso chose the same tactic a lap later and it secured the double world champion the fourth place he had held for much of the race.

"It was an experience and a half," Hamilton said before his penalty was announced. "I was praying for rain. I wanted it to come because I knew how to deal with it.

"The heavens opened and I saw Kimi begin to back off and to brake a bit earlier.

"I was going reasonably wide at Turn 12 but Rosberg spun and went off where I was coming back on. I went over the grass. It was incredibly tough.

"Kimi pushed me wide. I was a little bit ahead. I was outside on Turn One, I had no room and he basically pushed me so I went on the escape route.

"So I let him past, then got in his tow and he was ducking and diving left and right but I managed to get past him and I was pretty much gone from there."
Lewis Hamilton lost his lead in the Belgian Grand Prix with this spin on lap two
Hamilton fought back from this early spin to win in dramatic fashion

It was another superb performance in the wet from Hamilton, who has inherited Michael Schumacher's mantle as Formula One's rain master.

But for a long time it had looked as if the Englishman had tossed away his chance of victory on the daunting Spa-Francorchamps circuit.

The race started with the track wet in the immediate vicinity of the pits but dry on the majority of the lap.

Hamilton, along with every other driver in the race other than Renault's Nelson Piquet Jr, chose dry tyres.

But the conditions caught him out at the start of lap two, and he spun turning into the La Source hairpin.

The mistake put Raikkonen right behind him and the Ferrari driver simply drove past on the straight after the Eau Rouge esses.

It was a critical error from Hamilton, who was fuelled to make his first pit stop a lap earlier than Raikkonen.

606: DEBATE
I don't believe it - Raikkonen didn't finish so there was no advantage ultimately

S92

That meant his main hope of holding off the Ferrari driver was to build a lead big enough before his stop on lap 10 that Raikkonen could not close it on his extra lap.

Instead, although Hamilton shadowed Raikkonen to the first stops, he could not pass him.

Hamilton's hopes were further dented when he came out from his pit stop right behind his slower team-mate Heikki Kovalainen, who was battling for position with Kubica.

By the time he had cleared Kovalainen and Kubica five laps later, Raikkonen was five seconds ahead, a lead he was able to maintain comfortably to the second round of stops.

The two men both made their final stops on lap 25 and on the harder tyre Hamilton was able to close on the Ferrari.

The 23-year-old shaved about half a second a lap out of Raikkonen's lead and was within two seconds of the Ferrari by lap 31.
Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari is carried back to the pits after the Finn's crash on the penultimate lap of the Belgian Grand Prix
Raikkonen's hopes of victory - and probably the title - ended with a crash

He was unable to make much more of an impression until the predicted late shower of rain arrived with about five laps to go.

Within minutes, the back of the circuit was soaking, while it remained dry in the vicinity of the pits - not an unusual situation at a track renowned for its capricious weather.

Hamilton closed right up to Raikkonen on lap 42 but he fatefully cut the Bus Stop chicane after pulling out of a passing move at the end of the lap.

He then chased Raikkonen down the pit straight and passed the Ferrari going into the La Source hairpin at the start of lap 43.

But that was not the end of the battle.

When the two men reached the wet part of the track halfway around the lap, Hamilton slid off, handing the lead back to Raikkonen, who almost immediately lost it again by sliding off himself.

The Finn then lost control going through the fast Blanchimont corner, and speared into the wall.

But the drama had not finished, and was merely switched to the stewards' office.

Their decision is likely to be greeted with cynicism as it makes the championship battle dramatically closer at a time when Hamilton was beginning to look like he was inching towards his first title.

2008 Belgian gp-SPA Francorchamps-Qualifying Session results

1	22	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1:46.887	1:46.088	1:47.338	12
2	2	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1:46.873	1:46.391	1:47.678	16
3	23	Heikki Kovalainen	McLaren-Mercedes	1:46.812	1:46.037	1:47.815	16
4	1	Kimi Räikkönen	Ferrari	1:46.960	1:46.298	1:47.992	14
5	3	Nick Heidfeld	BMW Sauber	1:47.419	1:46.311	1:48.315	18
6	5	Fernando Alonso	Renault	1:47.154	1:46.491	1:48.504	18
7	10	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	1:47.270	1:46.814	1:48.736	19
8	4	Robert Kubica	BMW Sauber	1:47.093	1:46.494	1:48.763	20
9	14	Sebastien Bourdais	STR-Ferrari	1:46.777	1:46.544	1:48.951	19
10	15	Sebastian Vettel	STR-Ferrari	1:47.152	1:46.804	1:50.319	16
11	11	Jarno Trulli	Toyota	1:47.400	1:46.949		13
12	6	Nelsinho Piquet	Renault	1:47.052	1:46.965		15
13	12	Timo Glock	Toyota	1:47.359	1:46.995		13
14	9	David Coulthard	Red Bull-Renault	1:47.132	1:47.018		15
15	7	Nico Rosberg	Williams-Toyota	1:47.503	1:47.429		12
16	17	Rubens Barrichello	Honda	1:48.153			9
17	16	Jenson Button	Honda	1:48.211			9
18	20	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Ferrari	1:48.226			9
19	8	Kazuki Nakajima	Williams-Toyota	1:48.268			9
20	21	Giancarlo Fisichella	Force India-Ferrari	1:48.447			9

FIA Press Conference-Belgium-4sept

This is an Extract of the press conference held on 4th sept 2008 at belgium,drivers who were present in the conference include-Kimi Raikkonen,Nick Heidfeld,Kazuki Nakajima and Sebestain Vettel,The answers given by the drivers are quite good and the questions asked by the reporters are also entertaining...making me post it on my blog-

Q: (Heikki Kulta - Turun Sanomat) Kimi, you have a variety of weather here; what would you prefer for this weekend?
KR: Either it's dry or raining all the time. It's much easier for everybody. When it gets between those two weathers you have more luck involved. It's more if you get it right or wrong when it starts raining and it gets drier, so hopefully it's… for me, anything is good but maybe dry would nice.

Q: (Juha Päätalo - Financial Times Deutschland) Kimi, last year you had similar problems in qualifying but you were able to solve that. How much can the work of last year help you to find a solution because it hasn't yet been that way. Is the car very different from last year on that point?
KR: No, but we haven't solved the issues yet. We had similar issues last year at some point of the season. We were pretty OK at the beginning of this season and then it seems to have turned a bit worse. Hopefully we will get back to where we were earlier on but we will see now if we have made improvements or not, then we will go from there.

Q: (Mike Doodson) This is a question for all four of you about pit stops. David Coulthard recently said that he thought the racing would be more interesting if there were no pit stops. He thinks that pit stops distort the results of the races. We've also had incidents with fires in Hungary and a mechanic who was hurt in Valencia. I'm interested to know if you drivers would be interested or would like to see the end of pit stops, which, incidentally, came in 15 years ago.
NH: Well, hopefully we will see more overtaking next year with the new regulations but until we've had a couple of races we don't know. And as we all know, overtaking is so difficult that I think it would be a good idea to keep the pit stops to at least see some (overtaking).
KR: We see now most of the overtaking taking place at the pit stops, so without them, we probably will be running behind each other more, nothing really happening. Sometimes people get hurt in the pit stops unfortunately but that's part of racing, so it hasn't been too bad.
SV: I think when we are about to retire, we are looking for more interesting races as well because we will be in a position to watch the races. Honestly, in the car the races are pretty interesting and you are pretty busy. As Nick said, next year there should be more overtaking, so hopefully that by the time we are retiring the racing is more interesting.
KN: In my opinion it's better to keep the pit stops because at the moment that's the thing which makes the difference between other drivers, so we have a bit of choice for strategy. Sometimes it makes the racing more interesting.

Q: (Thierry Wilmotte - Le Soir) Kimi, everybody knows that team orders are not allowed, but can you imagine that at the end of the season you can decide on your own to help Felipe to fight for the title?
KR: It can happen. It all depends on how the next races go and where we are at the end of the year but we race as a team. We will see. Hopefully we don't end up in this situation, hopefully I will be in the championship up to the last race. But you never know what happens.

Q: To all of you: what is on your i-Pod?
KN: Any kind of music but most of it is Japanese pop. Since I came to Europe, I especially tend to listen more to Japanese songs, maybe to remind me of home.
SV: Any kind really, German folk songs are my favourite. Anything really, a bit of everything.
KR: Mostly Finnish music, all sorts. You wouldn't know, so it doesn't matter what I say.
NH: Yeah, similar to the others, a lot of different stuff, not a lot of classic stuff. No German folk music, more in the direction of R&B, hip-hop, not so much techno, more chill-out but various stuff.
SV: Why don't you like folk songs?
NH: Why do you like it, that's more difficult to answer, I think?
SV: I like the lyrics.
NH: I like the smile on the singers' faces, just like yours.

Q: Is Eau Rouge your favourite corner, and if so why?
NH: Ah, that's pretty easy to answer for me. It's not my favourite corner. In the past it was very exciting but nowadays with V8s and so much grip, it is not a big challenge any more.
KR: Yeah, from a driving point of view, at least, it's not really a corner. It's more straight for us. In the wet it's quite exciting but as Nick said, before it was much more challenging and the cars are better and we don't go so fast, so it's not a big deal any more.
SV: I still think it's a very nice corner and everybody would miss it if it wasn't part of the calendar but it's true, it's not that challenging, at least in dry conditions. I crashed here in wet conditions and it's more challenging definitely.
KN: For me it was good in GP2 but I will probably find it's going to be easier to go flat-out (in F1), so maybe less fun.

Q: If you were not an F1 driver, what would you be doing?
KN: That's a very difficult question. I have no idea but I think I would probably be doing something related to racing because that's the only thing that I'm interested in, even not as a driver, maybe doing something in racing.
SV: If I wouldn't have made it, I think I would look for the best possible education to get in the highest position to tell the drivers that made it in motorsport how they should do it the right way.
KR: It would probably be something to do with motorsport. It's always been part of my life, so I wouldn't think it would be much different in some other category or motocross or something like that.
NH: Yeah, pretty similar, actually. I enjoy sports a lot and most likely with an engine involved, probably motorbikes would have been interesting, rallying or whatever, just competing, travelling the world and doing sport.

Q: (Mike Doodson) So which is your favourite corner?
NH: My favourite corner is the Esses at Suzuka which have not been there (on the calendar this year), so I'm looking forward to next year.
KR: I don't really know. There are a lot of nice corners, so it's hard to pick one.
SV: Yeah, I would say there are too many. Probably the one in Montreal when you go to the personal parking, the right hander is quite nice! No, there are so many corners. I enjoy all of the tracks, so I like a lot of corners.
KN: Yeah, I agree with Nick, I think the Esses or the first and second corners at Suzuka would be nice, which I've never done in an F1 car but I'm sure it will be good.
courtsey-formula1.com and FIA

Belgium gp-SPA-Francorchamps-Technical Requirements

SPA Francochamps Technical Requirements: Spa-Francorchamps is the most complete test of a Formula 1 car on the current calendar with every aspect of the vehicle's handling tested to the limit : - It combines 320 kph straights with 70 kph hairpins, with several sixth-gear sweepers thrown in for good measure, and, of course, the unique challenge of Eau Rouge. While this section of the circuit and the fast left hander at Blanchimont may no longer be as testing as they once were, corners such as Pouhon, taken blind in sixth gear, still allow the drivers to make the difference. And all of that is before you factor in the notoriously unpredictable weather in the Ardennes, which can see the circuit soaked at one end and bone dry at the other.

Chassis: The circuit features a high number of "aero corners" (only 6 of the 19 turns are taken at less than 150 kph), and this would normally push the teams towards relatively high levels of downforce in order to maximise grip in the corners, as is the case at a circuit like Silverstone for example. However, Spa imposes a very different trade off, because the two long flat out "straights" on the circuit both provide genuine overtaking opportunities. This means that top-speed is a critical factor in order to protect position, and downforce levels must be determined accordingly. As a result, the teams run with a medium downforce set-up, aiming to achieve end of straight speeds of around 320 kph. Aerodynamic efficiency (generating maximum downforce for minimum drag) is the key to success at this circuit.

Suspension: In terms of suspension settings, the overall compromise is relatively stiff in order to ensure good aerodynamic performance in the quicker corners, and a good change of direction in the quick chicanes. However, good traction is also critical on the exit of the final chicane and La Source hairpin, as poor performance in either part of the circuit can leave a driver vulnerable to overtaking under braking for the next corner

Tyres:
Along with Barcelona, Spa is the most demanding circuit of the season for the tyres, and it is no surprise that Bridgestone will bring the two hardest compounds from its 2008 range for this race: the hard and medium compounds.

Ride heights:
Our ride heights are limited by the high forces encountered through the compression in Eau Rouge. From the bottom to the top of the hill, the car's ride height can vary by as much as 25mm and if the car bottoms out too much, the drivers can lose control. With the V8 engines and the current aerodynamic regulations, Eau Rouge is now taken easily flat out at around 300 kph. The drivers will scrub off around 10 kph through the sequence, but it is important to conserve as much speed as possible in order to maintain position along the long straight before Les Combes.

Brakes:
Almost the only part of the car which has a relatively easy time is the braking system. The circuit features just three very heavy braking events, before turns 1, 5 and 18. Overall, though, this is one of the easiest circuits for the brakes owing to the numerous high speed corners that require little braking effort.

Engine:
Along with Monza, Spa is the most demanding circuit of the season for the V8 engines. The duty cycle is particularly severe, with 72% of the lap spent at full throttle (only Monza exceeds this figure, with 76% of the lap). Furthermore, this includes two prolonged full throttle periods of over 20 seconds. The most challenging of these is undoubtedly the run of approximately 23 seconds from La Source to Les Combes, which includes Eau Rouge. This sequence exposes the engine and its ancillaries to extreme positive and negative vertical ‘g' forces through the compression and over the crest that follows. This is a factor we take into account when designing our lubrication systems, in order to avoid problems with oil feed under the extreme loadings